Chapter 3 - The Pattern in the Flesh
Isolation Room Three smelled of chlorhexidine and sterile foil. The overhead lights were dimmed to a soft amber, sparing my throbbing retinas from the harsh glare.
Dr. Vance worked with terrifying precision. She wore sterile magnifying loupes, meticulously debriding the charred strands of hair fused to my epidermal layers with micro-forceps. Each tug sent electric fire shooting down my spine, but I refused to scream. If I screamed, I would crumble, and if I crumbled, my father’s voice would fill the empty space.
“You know who I am,” I said through clenched teeth, staring at the sterile drape over my knees.
“I know your father,” Vance replied smoothly, dropping a scorched clump of my hair into a stainless steel specimen dish with a dull *clink*. “Richard Brennan sits on the hospital credentialing committee. He is a prominent general surgeon. He also happens to believe he is an artist with human tissue.”
Her tone was devoid of reverence. It held the icy contempt of someone who had dissected a predator’s work under a microscope.
“He told me it was an accident,” I whispered bitterly. “He told my mother to write it down as a domestic flare-up while checking the pilot light.”
Dr. Vance paused, her forceps hovering an inch above my blistered temporal bone. “A flare-up doesn't leave bilateral bruising along the cervical spine where hands clamped down to hold an adult woman’s skull at a forty-five-degree angle over an open broiler grate.”
She set the tool down and stepped around to the small workstation mounted on the wall. She tapped the touchscreen, pulling up high-resolution thermal imaging captured during my intake five minutes earlier.
The screen illuminated in vivid greens, yellows, and harsh infrared crimson.
“Look here,” Vance said, pointing a gloved finger at the display.
Across the back of my neck were five distinct, deep-purple depressions. They weren't burns; they were subcutaneous contusions. The exact shape and span of an adult male’s hand exerting fifty pounds of downward pressure.
“Richard is left-handed,” Vance stated flatly.
I looked at the screen, tears finally spilling over my eyelashes, stinging the raw burns on my temples. “How do you know that?”
May you like
Vance turned around, slowly pulling off her surgical gloves. Her knuckles were white. “Because four years ago, a surgical scrub nurse from his department was brought into my unit at two in the morning. Second-degree contact burns across her palms and forearms. Richard claimed she spilled boiling surgical autoclave fluid during an equipment malfunction.”
She leaned in, her gray eyes burning. “The contusion pattern on her wrists matched the exact grip on your neck. He didn't just hurt you tonight, Olivia. He followed his own established surgical protocol.”
